Java I18N Tutorial (lecture)

Informations

• Publié par: Eprau
• Nombre de lectures: 71
• Langue: English

Extrait

Developing Global Applications in Java
Developing Global Applications
in Java
Richard Gillam
Unicode Technology group
Center for Java Technology, Cupertino
I’m Richard Gillam from the Unicode Technology group in IBM’s Center for Java
Technology in Silicon Valley, and I’m here today to talk about developing global
applications, a procedure that’s generally known as “internationalization.”
Our group at IBM designed much of the internationalization support in the Java
Class Libraries under contract to Sun. What I want to do today is give you a guided
tour through these classes, what they do, and how to use them.
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INTERNATIONALIZATION
The first thing we should probably do is look at the term “internationalization” and
what we mean by it. One of the interesting things about it is that it’s the only 20
letter word I’ve seen that seems like a “normal word”.
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INTERNATIONALIZATION
I18N
Because it’s such a long word, you’ll often see it abbreviated as I18N (pronounced
as “eye eighteen en”). You have an I, 18 other letters, and an N. You’ll also se this
type of approach used with other words in this field, such as “localization” (L10N).
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INTERNATIONALIZATION
The process of designing a program
from the ground up so that it can be
changed to reflect the expectations of a
new user community without having to
modify its executable code.
Internationalization is the process of designing a program from the ground up so
that it can be changed to reflect the expectations of a new user community without
having to modify its executable code.
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Internationalization
The process of designing a program from the
ground up…
• Retrofitting an existing application to be
internationalized can be extremely difficult
…so that it can be changed to reflect the
expectations of a new user community…
• Different user populations, particularly those speaking
different languages or living in different countries, have
widely varying expectations for how a computer
program interact with them
…without having to modify its executable code.
• Translators are not programmers. Everything that is
affected by localization should be in a data file
somewhere: to create a localized version, one should
not have to change source code, recompile, re link, etc.
Let’s explore that long definition a little more closely. I’ve purposely used the
vague phrase “reflect the expectations of a new user community” because I don’t
want to suggest that the whole process is about transating programs into other
languages. This is the biggest part of it, of course, but it’s equally important that a
program follow local conventions for things such as how a number or date is
written. And, of course, the granularity there isn’t always by country. In the U.S.,
for example, civilians and military personnel write dates and times differently.
Designing the program from the ground up with this kind of customization in mind
is vital. Trying to customize a program that hasn’t been designed for it is extremely
time consuming and error prone.
And since most programmers aren’t experts on the various communities where their
software is used, the translators aren’t likely to be the original development team.
In fact, they’re not likely to be computer programmers at all. Providing translators
a way to do their job that doesn’t involve recompiling or re linking the program is
essential.
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More definitions
Translation
• The process of converting text in one language to text
in another language.
Localization
• The process of modifying a program to conform to the
expectations of a given user community.
This can involve not only translating text, but also altering
pictures, colors, and window layouts and changing the
program’s behavior
Internationalization
• The process of designing a program from the ground up
so that it can be localized with no modifications to the
executable code.
This does not involve localization– it’s a technique that greatly
simplifies the localization process
Internationalization is one of the terms you’ll hear lot when talking about global
software. The other two are translation and localization. Localization is more than
merely translating between languages– it also involves changing everything else
about a program’s appearance or behavior that might be affected by a country or
other population’s customs, beliefs, and preferences. Pictures may have to change–
mailboxes tend to look different in different countries, for example. Colors may
have different connotations in different countries. And so on.
Localization is distinct from internationalization. Localization (which includes
translation) is what translation houses do to software to prepare it for a particular
market. Internationalization is what programmers do to make sure the program can
be localized easily.
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The Case for
Internationalization
If you’re at this conference, you probably already know why internationalization is
important, but let’s take a few minutes to look at that issue. Even if I’m preaching
to the choir, I might be able to supply you with more ammunition to convince other
people.
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GDP By Region
China
Europe
Asia/ North
Pacific America
L. America
Japan
European
Union
This is a graph of the world GDP distribution. North America is the single largest
part, but it still represents only a third of the world’s economy. The European
Union is actually just as big as North America, representing another third of the
world’s economy. Obviously, people in most of the EU countries either don’t speak
English at all or don’t speak it natively. Japan represents another fifth of the
world’s economy, and again most Japanese don’t speak English.
The rest of the world accounts for a little over a fourth of the world’s economy, so
while any one country or region may be small, the whole thing still represents lots
of dollars. (And parts of it, such as the rest of Europe, the rest of Asia, and
especially Latin America, don’t represent that much incremental work.) As you can
see, two thirds of the dollars to be made out there comes from places other than the
U.S. and Canada.
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World Population Distribution
Middle East Japan
North America
China
EU
Europe
Latin India
America
Africa Asia/Pacific
The small slivers also don’t tell the whole story. This is a graph of world
population distribution. Notice how radically the rankings change. First, notice
how small a sliver North America is on this graph. Second, notice that more than
half of the world’s population is in Asia.
Also notice that China and India, which barely showed up on the previous graph,
dominate this graph. Countries with small slivers of the GDP graph and big
sections of the population graph represent large potential markets. Of course, much
depends on how the economies in these countries are growing and how
technological they’re becoming, but China and India are both making big pushes to
modernize right now.
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Internet Use in India
5,000,000
1,500,000
130,000
1998 1999 2000
In India, for example, the number of people having user accounts on the Internet is
exploding. At the end of last year, analysts estimated that there were about 130,000
registered Internet users in India. By the end of this year, thanks to loosening
telecommunications regulation, that number will grow to a million and half. By the
end of next year, they’re expecting it to grow to five million. Furthermore, these
numbers represent only registered Internet users. Analysts estimate that the
130,000 number for last year represents about a million actual users due to doubling
up of accounts.
As you can probably imagine, these are the kinds of figures that cause dollar signs
to light up in CEOs’ eyes.
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